


The Path of Honor

by nirejseki, robininthelabyrinth (nirejseki)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Dragons, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Kitsune, M/M, Ninjas - Freeform, Samurai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:22:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/robininthelabyrinth
Summary: Mick's family burns, and because he did nothing to stop it, unable to move once he'd seen the flames, he is stripped of his samurai title, left to wander the countryside alone as a dishonorable ronin. His life has no purpose, no direction, and no honor.Luckily, Len has plans enough for two people.





	The Path of Honor

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: Coldwave with Samurai!Mick.
> 
> Please forgive inaccuracies (such as keeping their Anglicized names!); I love history, but Japan isn't my specialization!

After his home burned, Mick was cast out by his master. 

It wasn't Mick's fault that they burned, compelled as he was by an old kitsune's curse to remain unmoving and fixated by the sight of a flickering flame, but he was unable to assist them and the master who commanded the samurai in his region felt that honor left him no choice but to throw Mick to the wolves.

Honor.

Hah! 

The opinion of the pretty little thing he was courting, more like. Mick's master turned into a slavering dog whenever she was near, a pretty jewel-like doll with big eyes, and he was always trying to make himself seem bigger and tougher than he really was in some misguided effort to impress her. Her father had been speaking a few weeks before of the importance of maintaining order, of harsh punishments meted out fairly, and Mick's master clearly wanted to show that he understood the code of bushido even better than they did.

It didn't hurt that with Mick turned ronin, Mick's master would be able to contest ownership of Mick's familial land, which would give him the collateral he needed to hire out more samurai under his banner, so as better to position himself among the halls of the powerful, and with some left over to hold a lavish wedding-feast besides. Mick's master had ambitions, after all, ambitions that required a favorable marriage, and those ambitions pulled him as hard as Mick’s curse pulled on him, and he was willing to cast aside true honor to win the prize he was pursuing. 

Of course, the irony of it all is that casting Mick out didn't even help Mick's master - Mick's _former_ master – reach his ultimate goal of impressing the girl. 

Mick knows this, because the night it happened - Mick orphaned, then stripped of his lands, his title and his place in the world all at once - Mick's master's intended bride-to-be slipped out of her room and came to him, grabbing his hands and whispering, "This is a monstrous thing to do! And to one of his own! Oh, if I were a man -!"

It made Mick smile, just when he'd thought he'd lost the ability to do so forever. 

"You're wasting your sympathy," he tells her. "It's been done. I'm dishonored." 

Even Mick's clothing now is the unmarked blankness of a ronin. No sigil to represent a master, no marks to demonstrate honor, nothing. 

The woman - more fiery than Mick suspects his master knows - snorts and stamps her foot in disdain. "That doesn't matter," she says fiercely. "Forget about dishonor! You should do what you want, and live free!"

Mick shakes his head, amused. "And what about you, pretty birdie?" he asks. "You ought to do the same."

"Don’t be absurd. I'm a woman."

"And I used to be a samurai, and I'm now a ronin, and you're telling me to live free anyway," Mick replies with a shrug. "Your advice is that if you don't like what you are, be something else - I will if you will."

She shoves a bag that tinkled with the sound of riches into his hands, as she meant to do from the start, but she looks less angry now and more thoughtful, like he's given her something to think about.

Mick wishes her the best, and goes.

He doesn't check what's the bag because it would be rude, like he doesn't trust her to give him enough to live on.

He should've remembered that he's ronin, now, not samurai, that he doesn't need to worry about things like rudeness, and he should have checked the goddamn bag.

The damn woman gave him pearls.

Pearls!

Oh, pearls are all well and good as collateral to trade in for money, of course; they're small and easily carried and far more valuable than anything else of the same size - no doubt what she was thinking. After all, to a woman, pearls are a prize to have and a promise of safekeeping, a gift from the moon goddess for their protection.

See: moon goddess.

See also: a goddess not terribly fond of bachelors. _Especially_ not dishonored ones.

Mick's promptly set upon by what feels like every oni and yokai in the goddamn region. It's like he has a giant sign above his head that reads "attack here", and it's infinitely worse whenever he's out under the moonlight. 

He beats all the monsters back each time, of course, but it's not exactly a sustainable situation, no matter how good he is with a blade. 

That's how he ended up caught in a tangle, about to be eaten by one of those washer-women made of long teeth and claws, and then suddenly she runs off screeching and he's rescued. 

By Len.

Len who – Len is – Len –

Len is a pain in Mick’s _ass_ , that’s what he is.

Ignoring literally everything else about him, he’s a frustration. He’s intelligent to the point of brilliance, he is always ready to lend a hand to those that need it, he’s excruciatingly fair and keeps to his personal set of rules no matter how harsh the consequence, he’s skillful in half a dozen different ways, he's a splendid fighter, faster and tricky and talented –

He’s everything a samurai should be, but for the accident of his low birth. 

The son of a disgraced man, a servant to a samurai who then betrayed his master for money and drink, and the grandson of a peasant, Len will never own land nor armor, and without such ownership, he can never rise to the station he ought to have. He will never be a samurai, despite being far more worth it than Mick's former master, or even Mick himself, and all they did different was be born into nobility. 

Mick’s never really had thoughts about social class before, and Len never mentions any dissatisfaction with his lot in life, reduced to penury and theft and desperation for lack of better options, but Mick's certainly started having these thoughts about how some people deserve a classification regardless of their birth more and more ever since Len joined him.

Len is –

Len is one of the most honorable people Mick’s ever met.

Oh, don’t get him wrong; Len’s a thief. That much was quickly evident. He’s as curious as a magpie and as light-fingered as a monkey. But Mick sees the code that he’s fashioned for himself – no stealing from widows or orphans, no unnecessary harm, and no betrayals – and he sees how harshly Len enforces that code, and he knows that if Len had only had the slightest sliver of a chance, he would have been a samurai beyond compare. 

Not a ronin like Mick.

But that’s not how the world works, and so it is that Mick is the master and Len merely his servant, no matter how Mick tries to equalize the ground between them.

After Len saved him from the washerwoman, he asked only for permission to travel with Mick and serve him, and the rest Mick mostly figured out later – the rest being that Len needs a good cover to get in and out of the nicer parts of the towns they travel through, of course. By the time Mick figures it out, he, being a ronin and thus bound by no code of honor whatsoever, is more than happy to trade what's left of his honor for the pleasure of Len’s company.

What is left over from the money they earn, whether through Mick’s strength of arms or Len’s thievery, Len mails to his sister, who is training as a geisha in the capitol. Len loves her dearly, though they never go to visit her - Len has a father he fears more than any yokai, a father that lurks in the periphery of the capitol in hopes of siphoning money from his children, and so Len contents himself with the occasional letter and shipments of what money they have after their living expenses.

Len is –

Len has eyes of unnatural paleness and a fox-face filled with mischief; if Mick hadn't put him through every test he could devise, he would swear that Len was a kitsune or some other spirit come to pester him.

And Mick cannot fathom that he ever lived life without him.

He thinks that he would have become lost very quickly without Len to guide him.

Of course, Len is, nominally speaking, merely Mick's servant: he helps with the gear and assists Mick in donning his armor, hanging back to throw rocks from a distance while Mick leaps forward into battle. It is Mick's facility with a sword that they sell when they need honest money and all of Len's thieving has come to nothing. But Mick very quickly learns to listen to the advice of his purported servant, who is cleverer than the monkey god of the South and not shy about it, neither. 

It's not correct to say that Len never leads Mick astray - more that any difficulty Len leads them into, he is usually able to pull them out of again. 

After all, Len loves trouble – and that’s why he refuses to get rid of Mick’s gifted pearls. 

“I still think it’d be easier to just sell the last of ‘em,” Mick grumbles one day as he prepares to join in one of the larger territorial battles. Len might be an excellent thief, but Mick’s still a ronin, and there's far more money available that he can make legitimately by hiring out his fighting skills as a mercenary. While this battle didn’t seem like anything much – a local samurai going against his neighbor – it would still pay, and that’s what matters. “Pearls are trouble – they draw the attention of the yokai.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Len says, strapping on Mick’s armor briskly. In the years they’ve known each other, Len’s gotten frighteningly good at it – he didn’t know the first part of it when he started, not until Mick walked him through the process a dozen times, but now he can get it done as quickly as a high-born valet. “You like fighting; you’d be bored without those yokai attacking us all the time.”

“We could use the money from the pearls to send to your sister,” Mick points out, not for the first time.

“We used three of the pearls to get her into the training and purchase her dresses at the very beginning, and that’s enough,” Len says firmly. “She’s a maiko now and started making her own income; she’s fine.”

“Then equipment,” Mick says. “We could improve our equipment –”

“Your armor is your baby,” Len scoffs. “You inherited from your father, and you’ll never trade it in for anything. And it’s not like we don’t make more than enough to keep it in good shape even without resorting to using the pearls.”

“A new sword,” Mick suggests.

“Like you’d ever use anything but Heatwave.”

Len has a point. Heatwave is the name of Mick’s sword, a good and strong blade, the edge so sharp that it can slice straight through a log without dulling. The blade has an unusual reddish tint that shimmers into a wave-like pattern; Mick’s never seen another like it. That’s likely due to its supernatural origin – Mick wrested it from a dragon’s den that Len decided in a fit of insanity to rob one time, and Len thinks it may have been a Karura’s sword, once, forged in Jingoku.

Ironically enough, although they had gone to the den to steal from it, they’d ended up finding the entire place infested with okka; the frog-spirits were largely harmless on their own, more like gnats than actual threats. But when they were all gathered together and rushed them at once, they were actually rather formidable, and of course they had no choice but to fight them off.

By the time they’d defeated all the okka, the dragon had returned, looking rather bemused, and Len somehow managed to convince him that they’d come to visit and in the process done him a favor in clearing his hoard for his benefit, and that he ought to either pay them for their services or invite them in as guests.

Len's silver tongue would make kitsune pine in jealousy.

Mick received Heatwave as payment, the dragon being a pleasantly misanthropic sort that hated having guests, and it being freely-given, rather than stolen, meant that Mick is able to access its powers.

Supposedly, Heatwave had powers beyond human imagining that Mick's not yet unlocked, but honestly? Mick is pretty happy just having a damn good sword that also happens to light on fire on command. 

Len, being only Mick’s servant, did not receive anything from the dragon, but he managed to lift a pair of daggers that were as cold as a high mountain wind or possibly the deepest part of the ocean, Mick wasn’t sure which. The dragon noticed him doing it, of course, but ended up applauding Mick for having sent his servant to steal the only portion of his treasure hoard that could only have its ownership transferred via theft, visible only to the wise through certain signs, and the dragon had thought the knowledge was long since lost.

They now had a standing invitation to drop by the dragon's den for lunch, as long as they sent advance warning and left promptly at the end of the meal. 

“We should still get rid of ‘em,” Mick tells Len. They’d already used up nearly half the sack, selling each pearl they were willing to part with in a different town for cash or services, but Len was surprisingly difficult to convince of getting rid of the rest. 

“You’re the boss,” Len replies, shrugging. 

Mick snorts. He hasn’t been the boss in anything but name for a long time. 

Len smirks at him, perfectly aware of that fact. “I still say we ought to keep ‘em for a hard day,” he says. “You never know when you might need something to fall back on.”

“Fall back on?”

Len shrugs. “If we get tired of travelling around all the time.”

Mick frowns at him. In all the time they’ve had this familiar argument – scarcely an argument, more of a well-rehearsed verbal dance – Len’s never raised that particular point before. “What do you mean?”

“We’ve had no choice but to use the pearls we’ve already used, to situate ourselves, to get Lisa educated, fix your armor, all that,” Len says. “What’s left – well. If you combine what we have and what we’ve saved up over the years –”

“Saved up? We saved up?”

“I send it to Lisa,” Len says. “She keeps it for us.”

“She _does_?”

Len rolls his eyes at him. “What’d you think it was for?”

“Her education!”

“ _That much?_ ”

“How would I know what you need to pay to learn to be a geisha?” Mick demands.

Len rolls his eyes at him. “That doesn’t matter. Anyway, I’ve been calculating, and as long as we don’t sell any more of the pearls, it’ll be just enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“A house,” Len says. “Land. _Enough_ land.”

Mick stares at him.

Len doesn’t need to finish the thought for his meaning to be clear. A samurai is a landed warrior, a nobleman, identified by his ownership of profitable land above the minimum decreed by the law; when Len spoke of ‘enough’, he referred to the amount deemed legally necessary to support a samurai lifestyle of the sort that Mick had had years before. 

Enough land: enough to take on a master once more, to serve with honor rather than disgrace, to be _samurai_ once more. 

Mick doesn’t know what to say.

Mick doesn’t know what to _think_. 

“Why didn’t you tell me we were saving up for that?” Mick asks after a long few moments. “I wasn’t – I haven’t –”

He isn’t pining for his former life, he means; he hasn’t been dreaming of it, hasn’t even really been missing it. He was a samurai, now he is a ronin – that’s just how it is, and he has Len, now, and he’s happy. 

He’s _happy_.

Why change what works?

Len shrugs. “You’ve gotten a great reputation,” he says. “Fighting all those yokai – you’re rather well-known for it now, you know.”

Sure, Mick knows that; they’ve had some crazy adventures in the years they’ve worked together, yokai and oni and all sorts of things. People have started nodding when they hear Mick’s name, calling him yokai-slayer, and he’s not had any trouble getting jobs as a mercenary recently after he explains who he is, not like it'd been back at the start when people looked at his ronin clothing with suspicion. 

“With a reputation like that, any shogun would be happy to take your oath,” Len says. “You could have your pick; just buy the land where you like the lord, assuming we can find something for sale. Which we probably can.”

“Len –”

“You don’t have to give me your answer now,” Len says hastily. “It’s just – you know – I thought you might like it.”

“But –” Mick says, unsure why he’s being so defensive about this. After all, why _not_ go back to being a samurai? It’s his birthright. The loss of it still stung, sometimes, when he wasn’t permitted to sit at the main table at a samurai’s house, when he was forced to use the back entrance, when they did not greet him with respect and gave him only the scraps during dinner. When his father's armor was sneered upon and his name spat upon, yes, he hated it, and in those moments, he wanted nothing more than to be a samurai again – and yet, he resists accepting Len's plan, and he doesn’t know why. He speaks without thinking, asking, “But what would you do?”

Oh.

_That’s_ why.

“What do you mean?” Len asks.

“You’re a thief,” Mick points out. “You love being a thief. That’s fine for a ronin, or a ronin’s servant, but samurai are bound by a higher standard of honor.”

Len blinks at him.

“I’d rather be a ronin with you, then a samurai alone,” Mick clarifies.

“Stop being so touchy-feely,” Len says, but he’s smiling, one of his real smiles, crooked and hidden but with eyes glowing with warmth. “Of _course_ I’d come with you. Besides, the rule that says it's against honor to steal only applies against humans. I was thinking I could work with our dragon friend to figure something out, find some yokai targets - they're more fun anyway, more of a challenge. And besides, if you have your own land, we could even bring Lisa there once she’s graduated.”

“Well, in that case, I don't see why not,” Mick says, and he feels joy in his heart at the thought. Samurai again, _honor_ again, and yet he keeps Len at his side? And even better, to help reunite Len with the sister he's missed so much over the years? Yes; that he will be more than willing to do. He’s much more comfortable doing things for other people than for himself. “We could set her up in her own school, even." 

His parents had once had a geisha school on their lands, though it had faded away to obscurity and died out in Mick’s grandfather’s time. His parents had spoken occasionally about trying to lure a geisha back to their property to start a new one, since it was a sign of great prestige to have such a school, but they hadn’t had a chance to find one that they liked well enough to start patronage of before the fire came and took them. Sure, whatever property Mick and Len eventually buy with their saved-up money isn’t going to be anywhere near as prestigious as Mick’s parents’ homestead had been, which would normally make it far more difficult to convince a geisha to come - but if it's Len's sister, then she might consider it, and founding your own school was nothing to look down at. It would help increase the prestige of their new home, which in turn would increase Lisa's prestige, and - yes. 

Yes, this could work.

"I thought you'd approve," Len says with satisfaction.

"You'll have Lisa back again," Mick says with a smile. "And we could bar your father from ever trespassing; what's not to like?"

"That isn't the point - you know, I hate how you always manage to make the gifts I give you into gifts to me," Len complains, rolling his eyes. He hands Mick his sword. “Have fun out there,” he says, nodding in the general direction of the battle, where the drums have already begun beating the summons to battle. “And when this fight's done, we can start looking at available properties in our price range, and once we have that done, we can get you signed up on the tax rolls as a samurai again.” 

Mick goes to war with a broader smile than usual. 

It’s a small battle, of course, two local samurai warring at their borders; Mick's rather outgrown these little battles, which could barely afford ronin to supplement their own forces, but the one that had hired Mick this time had offered a large enough sum to make the job worthwhile. In fact, there were a lot more mercenaries present than Mick had anticipated; there were at least three dozen on his side, and another thirty on the other side. 

Surprisingly large for such a small dispute over where the property line exactly was. 

“Someone’s daughter involved here?” Mick asks one of the other ronin, wondering what could motivate these samurais to drain their coffers in such a ridiculous way. “Or their wife?”

The ronin snorts, but turns away without answering; rather rude, actually, but ronin weren’t exactly known for their manners. 

There’s almost no discussion before the battle begins, though, and that’s weird on its own grounds – usually there’s some attempt at mediation, or at least some boasting, some listing of everyone’s heritage, something to try to resolve the dispute without actually putting sword against sword and making the samurai liable for any death-fees incurred.

And when the battle does start –

“Is everyone after me?” Mick asks the air, bewildered; it certainly felt like that. Now, Mick’s good, he’s _very_ good, but it’s almost as though everyone on his side have disappeared into the air, and everyone on the other side is gunning for him in specific. 

It’s not until the ronin he spoke with earlier – a big brute, with a distinctive green helmet, and very much _supposed to be on Mick's side_ – takes a swing at him that Mick realizes that he actually is the target.

“What the fuck?” he roars, swinging back with renewed energy. This is beyond the typical dishonor of the ronin – this is dishonor on behalf of the samurai that hired them.

This is an _ambush_.

And no matter how good Mick is, even he can’t go up against this many fighters at once.

When they beat him down to the ground – their swords sheathed, their intent to take him alive clear – he only hopes that Len figured it out before he did, and that he’s managed to get away.

Mick wakes in a jail cell.

Not the first time, mind you; whenever it was spotted, Len’s thieving was ascribed to Mick, Len being Mick’s servant, and even without the theft, Mick’s own brawling had been enough to put him in jail by itself a handful of times. 

But this _is_ the first time it’s been in a proper dungeon.

At least Len’s not here; that’s some small bright side. Sure, he might be in trouble elsewhere, but there’s a chance that he might not, and if he’s not, then he’s already putting the full weight of his spectacular brain on the task of rescuing Mick.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Mick calls.

There’s no response at first, but then the door open, and it’s –

Mick blinks.

It’s a face he hasn’t seen in over a decade.

His old – rather, his _former_ – master.

The man doesn’t look good. There are circles under his eyes, his skin is grey, and he is deeply enraged about something, though he is trying to hide it.

“Rory,” he says.

“What?” Mick says, refusing to even call the man by name, much less with an honorific. 

His former master bristles. “You should address me with respect,” he snaps. “I am the shogun here!”

“I’ve met plenty of those,” Mick says, unimpressed despite the fact that his master seems to have advanced further in the world since Mick left him. “And besides, I’m a ronin; what do I care for respect?”

His former master twitches - the lack of composure is pathetic, especially compared to Len's icy savior faire - but maintains control, albeit barely. “Sign this,” he says, and throws a scroll into the cell.

Mick picks it up and opens it to read.

“You don’t have to read it,” his former master snaps. "You're too dumb to understand it, anyway. Just sign it."

Mick ignores him, but it doesn’t matter – the substance of the scroll is clear, even if Mick didn't have the advantage of a samurai's education.

It’s a bill of sale.

“You want to buy something from me?” Mick asks, frowning in confusion. Of all the things it might have been, a bill of sale was not what he was expecting. A confession of treachery to justify his execution, maybe, but a _sale_? “But - what? I don’t have anything but my armor and my sword, and I’m not going to sell you either of those.”

“Just sign it!”

“The substance of the sale is missing,” Mick says. “I’m not going to sign something that you can fill in the details later!”

Mick’s former master slams his hands down. “Sign it! Now! That’s an order!”

Once, years ago, when this man was Mick’s master, Mick would have obeyed; his honor would have demanded that he extend trust even where he did not know if it was justified. 

But the oaths Mick swore to this man have long since gone up in smoke, cast aside by this man’s own actions, and his honor, or what is left of it, demands nothing at all. 

Mick looks at his former master.

“No,” he says.

And he keeps saying it, even when his former master demands it; says it even when his former master sends in men to beat him; says it even when his former master summons forth a torturer.

He doesn’t know what it is his master wants, exactly, and by this point, he doesn’t care. It’s a matter of honor to deny him. 

“You will die, then,” his former master says, after two days of this. He is surrounded by many samurai and ronin, none of whom look particularly pleased to be here, but who are bound by their oaths not to oppose the will of their shogun. They shouldn’t permit such an oath to drive them into dishonor, but Mick can tell by the look in their eyes that they had given themselves over to dishonor long before this; this is just one more step into the abyss, and they've already gone too far for it to be more than just more pain. “That may not solve my problem as neatly as I would like, but I will at least enjoy it. You will die here, alone in the darkness like a dog needing to be put down.” 

“I don’t think so,” Mick says, his voice raspy from all the screaming he's been doing.

“What?” his former master asks.

Mick, whose eyes had been fixed on the frost that had been very slowly spread on a corner of the ceiling for the last hour, a frost that was extremely unusual and unlikely given that it was currently very nearly midsummer, smiles. 

He hopes Len knows what he’s doing. 

The ceiling shatters.

But it’s not Len who drops down.

It’s –

“ _Ninjas_?” Mick hisses, utterly shocked. 

And not just a few, either; the ignoble assassins of the night, terrors of the underworld, weapons wielded only by the very greatest of shoguns, their clothing patterned in browns and greens to help them move unseen through the brush, come down in force, a dozen, two dozen, three. 

Where did they even _come from_?

And who in the world could afford to purchase the services of so many members of a ninja clan?

“Reinforcements!” Mick’s former master howls as his samurai and ronin struggle to pull out their swords, some succeeding, others failing and falling before the ninjas. “Summon reinforcements!”

But no reinforcements came.

Len drops through the hole in the ceiling, smiling, but that smile vanishes when he sees the state Mick’s been left in.

“Damnit, Mick!” he exclaims, running forward to free Mick. "I thought you said samurai didn’t go in for torture!"

“They don’t,” Mick says wryly. “If they’re honorable.”

“Bastard,” Len grumbles, sitting down and starting to treat Mick's wounds. He doesn’t even bother to watch the remainder of the fight, just takes care of Mick while the _army_ of ninjas sweeps through samurai and ronin alike.

It's rather a delight to watch. Mick's always had something of a thing for ninja fighting styles, the few times he's had a chance to see it. 

"I have questions," Mick says, when he's no longer in quite so much immediate pain. "Many questions."

"Shhh," Len says. "Let's get you somewhere more comfortable first - and to a proper doctor. I can't do much more than stabilize you."

Somewhere more comfortable turned out to be Mick's former master's bedroom, while the ninja clan - because Mick's quite sure it's a full clan, now that he's had a chance to look at them, rather than a motley assortment of mercenaries - very neatly complete their conquest, with all of the captive samurai and ronin being placed in a row in the main hall, either having demanded their honorable surrender or, if they failed to give it, tied up and gagged (as they had done with the shogun, Mick's erstwhile master). 

After the doctor sees to Mick, though, he's feeling well enough to march downstairs to where Len is talking with one of the ninjas, their face hidden behind a mask. 

"Questions," Mick says. "I have them."

"Are you sure you ought to be out of bed?" Len asks.

"Doctor says it's fine," Mick lies. "Now. I want answers."

"Ask away," Len says.

Good. 

But first things first.

"Thank you for your assistance," Mick says to the ninja, because damnit he might be a ronin, but he still knows how to be polite. His mother taught him the best of manners. "And that of your clan."

"Think nothing of it," the ninja says, their voice surprisingly high. "We repay a debt."

"Wait, _you_ repay?" Mick asks, surprised. He'd been about to ask about the terms by which they expected to be paid for their services. "To who? What debt?"

"My debt," the ninja says. "To you."

And then the ninja pulls off their mask and cowl, revealing -

A woman.

No, wait.

Mick _knows_ this woman.

"Weren't you supposed to _marry_ that asshole downstairs, Birdie?" Mick asks.

She grins at him, the white canary free from her cage at last. "I can't believe you remember that nickname. And yes, I was. But you told me to take my own advice: to be something else, if I didn't like what I was."

"So, what, you ran away and became a _ninja_?"

"Why not? It's dishonorable, I know, but they accept women, and samurai do not."

"Judging by how you went through those samurai, they clearly should," Mick says wryly. He sees a good number of the samurai who surrendered honorably - the ones who looked most repulsed by what they were being made a party to when forced to watch his torture - nodding in resigned agreement. "Thanks, Birdie."

"My pleasure," she says. "Besides, it seemed only fitting, given what he was planning on doing."

"That was my next question," Mick says. "What _is_ this whole thing about? He wanted me to sign some sort of bill of sale, but he never said what."

"It has something to do with some court case he lost," Len says. "Apparently. No, don't look at me; I had no idea about any of this before this happened! I only escaped the ambush because I was, ah, already heading out of the camp for certain important other reasons -"

He'd been out thieving, he means. 

Oh, Len. Never change. 

"Do _you_ know what this was about?" Mick asks Birdie, whose real name he does not actually remember.

"As your - uh -"

"Len," Mick supplies.

There's really no other way to describe him.

"As your Len said," she says, "the courts ruled against him. Do you really not know? I know he had it filed secretly at first, but the case was much discussed in the higher level circles once the highest level court began deliberating, since he couldn't keep it quiet anymore after that -"

"I don't really hang out in the higher level circles anymore," Mick points out, amused. He hasn't paid attention to a court case other than those that directly related to him and Len since before he last saw the Birdie. "What court case?"

"Yours, of course," Birdie says. "Your family's land."

Mick blinks. "What about it? It was stripped away from me once I was declared ronin."

"It was _contested_ ," Birdie corrects. "Not stripped. You didn't even know - oh, when I think of it, I get so angry! Mick, it was foul, truly foul, truly _dishonorable_ what he did - he made you ronin and banished you so that you couldn't contest his claim to the land before the courts -"

"But a samurai only owns his land at the will of his master," Mick says, confused. "When I became ronin -"

"A master is still not allowed to strip their samurai for their own gain," Len says. "Even I know that's against the rules."

"It happens," Mick says, shrugging.

"It happens, but not so blatantly, not in such an obviously corrupt sort of way," Birdie says. "Since you were the sole survivor of your family, and then made ronin so soon afterward, well. The court of first instance got suspicious of what happened and investigated beyond the mere submission that was being made, and they discovered -"

She stops, her face gone pale, her eyes pitying.

"He was behind the fire," Mick guesses. It's the only thing he can think of that would cause a court to even _consider_ not giving a shogun his samurai's territory after he had cast them out, no matter how corrupt the process. "The one that I couldn't stop."

Birdie nods. "I'm sorry, Mick."

Mick presses his lips together. "Why wasn't I just killed then and there? I was the only surviving heir; if I were dead, there'd be no question of the land going to him."

"The circumstances of your survival was too well known," she says. "Too infamous: a samurai standing by, transfixed by a kitsune curse, as his family burned? Everyone knew about it almost at once. So he had to do something else, and anyway he thought he'd solved the issue by declaring you ronin and taking your land anyway. It was only when he started to realize that the courts were actually trying the case, not just approving it blindly, that he realized it'd be easier if you were just dead. He tried to go after you, but you never stayed anywhere long enough, and anyway you got to be a really good fighter somewhere along the way -"

All those fights with the damn yokai thanks to Birdie's cursed pearls, no doubt. 

"And anyway then the court ruled against him and he got absolutely desperate. He had to stop you from finding out about the court's decree. That's why he tried to get you to sign the bill of sale: if he could've convinced you to sell, that would've given him free title, no matter how coerced people might've suspected the sale to be."

"But why didn't he just kill me now?"

"It would confirm everyone's suspicions about the fire," she explains. "Right now he still has the slightest shred of credibility, because he's still denying that the courts were right, but after something like this, where he went after you to have you killed? He'd have none, and that would be just as fatal to his ambitions as not getting your land."

"But why does he care about my land so much?" Mick asks. "Surely he could have gone elsewhere - or -"

"Mick, your family were his largest and richest landholders," Birdie exclaims. "A noble family, generations old, but not particularly ambitious; they served with honor and loyalty. To kill off such a family is an abomination!"

"I don't think he cared much about being an abomination," Len says, clearly still upset about the torture.

Birdie shrugs. "You're not wrong; there's also the practical part of it. You see, he'd already used your land as collateral for loans to pay his samurai and ronin, the ones he used to make himself more powerful. If he didn't get full title to your land, he would never be able to pay off his debts."

"Oh," Mick says. "I - guess I see. Okay. Well, that's obviously not happening. I'm not selling him my land."

"Definitely not," Birdie says. "The courts ruled against him, as I said."

"So where exactly does that leave us?" Mick asks.

Len nods in agreement. "What does it matter to us?"

"Mick, that means they ruled in _your favor_ ," she exclaims. "Your family's lands have been restored to you - and, after a defeat of this magnitude and dishonor of this scale on his part, you have a right to his, as well."

"I have a right to _what_?!"

"Oh, this is going to be fun," Len says, and starts grinning.

It ends up working out - Mick can use the land (lands, plural) he now owns to pay the contracts of the honorable samurai around him, who are desperately relieved to be able to serve an honorable master once more, and the less honorable he strips of their property, as is his right, transferring it to those ronin who protested his treatment even when they had no honor left to defend. 

They are all deeply thankful and repay his actions with their oaths of loyalty, samurai and former ronin both, and it leaves Mick with a fairly sizeable army at the end of it. He has no idea what to _do_ with an army, mind you, but he's sure Len can come up with something.

He reserves some of the land, a number of parcels of it, for anyone who can demonstrate the merits of being a samurai regardless of birth. Len refuses to try out for the position, but he gets a positive flood of people coming form all over to show off their skills, and they bring with them their craftsman skills, their connections to the mercantile houses, their learning and education, and it turns out that getting on their good side is a very good thing to do.

And in the meantime, their presence gives Mick a reason to rebuild his family's home. He has a lot of people who want to see him, now, who want to talk to him and ask for favors and whatnot, and they need somewhere to do it - he refuses to live in the shogun's old house, a host of bad memories for all involved, and regardless it offends Len's sense of aesthetics so obviously they can't stay there. They certainly have the money to spend on rebuilding the old homestead, given that they suddenly have no use for all the money that Len saved up for them to buy land.

Lisa not only comes to start a school on Mick's land, she brings a handful of fully trained geisha with her, lured in by the vastness of Mick's newfound wealth - a full school of geisha, a mark of considerable distinction, signifying that Mick was truly a man of high status once more. Mick doesn't care so much about that; he's mostly pleased that it makes any parties he throws going forward much easier because he can now just shove over all the planning to them.

Birdie - whose name is Sara, and who apparently is now married to the head of a ninja clan known only as the League of Shadows, a lovely if terrifying lady known as Nyssa - takes one look at Lisa and develops hearts in her eyes. Nyssa reacts in much the same way, so in the end they request permission from Mick to open a formal House in his area. He agrees, of course; honor or no honor, it's unwise to turn down a ninja's direct request, and anyway it's even more prestigious to have an official house of ninja on your property, even if it's technically still supposed to be dishonorable to do so. 

Mick does ask that they at least pretend that they are acting in an honorable fashion when he's in earshot, which amuses Nyssa and which she instantly grants.

Even their friend the dragon comes to visit, claiming that he did so in honor of them "finally", his words, settling into a new lair. Everyone is very impressed by the willingness of a dragon to come forth to bless the land, as it's apparently a mark of very good luck. Mick and Len are less concerned about the luck - bad luck's always served them well enough - and more about their pleasure that they can now make the dragon a standing offer to come over for dinner in response to his standing offer that they could visit for lunch. 

It's very important to both Len and Mick to reciprocate now that they can.

Pleased by their politeness, he gives Mick a boat made of solid gold (Mick isn't asking where it came from or why in the world anyone would build such a useless thing) as a lair-warming present and wishes them luck with children, the latter of which was a little worrying given the fact that neither Len nor Mick currently have plans to stop being male. 

One never knows, though. 

At some point, Len stops cackling with glee every time their good fortune takes another turn, but it takes a very long time. 

It's okay. Mick's not worried - with an army, a dragon, a ninja clan, and his sister, not to mention a whole list of yokai the dragon would be very pleased for them to rob from in order to supplement his hoard, it seems quite clear that Len is going to be around for a very long time.

Causing trouble every step of the way.


End file.
